TOM ROBINSON TAKEN INTO COUNSEL.
At last May, in the innocence of her heart, took a rash step. She heard
her father say it was good, showery, fishing weather, and she was aware
Tom Robinson often fished in the Dewes; what was to hinder her from
making a detour by the river on her way home from school, and if she saw
Tom near the old bridge--the pools below were specially patronized by
fishers--she might go up to him and ask him frankly if he had an opening
for her services, along with those of Phyllis Carey, in his shop? If he
had, would he do her the great favour to speak to her father and mother,
and ask them not to send her away to be a scholar at St. Ambrose, but to
let her stay and be a shop-woman in Redcross?
Tom Robinson, at the first word of her appeal, put up his fishing-rod,
slung his basket, in which there were only a couple of fish, on his
back, shouldered her books, and turned and walked back with her, as if
it was he who was seeking her company and not she his. How else was he
to make the little girl who might have been his pet sister see that
there was any harm in the irregular course she had pursued? How,
otherwise, was she to understand that she was big enough--nearly a head
taller than her sister Dora--and old enough with her seventeen years,
though she was still the child of the family, to render it indecorous
for her to come, out of her own head, without the knowledge of anybody,
to have a private interview with him on the banks of the Dewes?
"'Robinson's' is highly honoured," he told her, in a tone partly
bantering, partly serious, and wholly friendly, "and I too should, and
do, thank you for the trust in me which your proposal implies, but I am
afraid it would not do, Miss May."
May's fair young face fell.
"Oh! I am so sorry," she said simply; "but, please, may I know why you
have Phyllis and will not have me?"
"The case is altogether different. Mrs. Carey made up her mind that Miss
Phyllis should go into a shop--mine or another's. Phyllis was not happy
at home; she is not a clever, studious girl, though she is your friend
and is very nice--of course all young ladies are nice. There is no
comparison between you and her."
"But why shouldn't clever people go and work in shops?" persisted May,
in her half-childish way--"not that I mean I am clever; that would be
too conceited. But I am sure it would be a great deal better for shops
if they had the very cleverest people to work in them."
"It depends on the kind of cleverness," he told her. "With regard to one
sort you are right, of course; with respect to another it would not
answer, and it would be horrible waste."
She opened her brown eyes wide. "Why do you waste your abilities and
college education?" she asked him naïvely--"not that everybody calls it
a waste; some people say 'Robinson's' is the high-class shop it is,
because its masters have not only been respectable people, they have
always been educated men and gentlemen."
"I ought to say for myself and my predecessors that I am much obliged to
'some people' for acknowledging that," he remarked coolly.
"I beg your pardon, Mr. Robinson," said May humbly. "I know I have been
very rude--I am constantly saying stupid things."
"Not at all; and though you did, never mind--say them to me if you
like," he gave her _carte blanche_ to comfort her. "But look here, Miss
May, I don't wish you to make mistakes. Indeed it is my duty, since I am
a great deal older than you--old enough to be, well, your uncle I
should say--to prevent it if I can."
"I don't see how you could be my uncle," said May bluntly, "when you are
not more than five or six years older than Annie--I have heard her say
so--you are more like my brother."
The instant she mentioned the relationship to which he had aspired in
vain, she felt the blood tingling to her finger-tips, and she could see
him redden under the shade of his soft felt hat.
May groaned inwardly. "Oh! I am a blundering goose; I wonder anybody can
be so infatuated as to think me clever."
"I have not said what I wished to say," he resumed, for somehow, in
spite of her forgetfulness and lack of tact, he could talk well enough
to May. "I must set you right. I have not a grain of the scholar in me
such as you have, neither do I believe that those who went before me
had; we could never have been more than fair students. We did not go out
of our way to get learning. We did what our associates and
contemporaries did, that was all. I fancy I may take the small credit to
us of saying that we had no objection to learn what the ancients
thought, saw, and did, after we had been lugged through the Latin
grammar and caned into familiarity with Greek verbs. We were like other
men who had the same advantages. I honestly believe if we had anything
special and individual about us it was a turn for trade. That is the
only manner in which I can account for our sticking to the shop, unless
we were mere money-grubbers. But all that signifies very little; what
does signify is that you are not quite like other girls. What, May, do
you pretend that you do not prize the roll of a sonorous passage, or the
trip of an exquisite phrase in Latin or Greek? That it does not tickle
your ears, cling to your memory, and haunt you as a theme in music
haunts a composer? Do you not care to go any deeper in Plato or in the
dramatists? Is it a fact that you can bear to have heard the last of
Antigone, and Alcestis, and Electra?"
May hung her head like one accused of gross unfaithfulness, with some
show of reason.
"No, I cannot say that, Mr. Robinson," she owned, "I shall think and
dream of them all my life. They are so grand and persecuted and sad. But
there--if I do not turn my back on them and my books, I must go to St.
Ambrose's, there is no choice," ended May disconsolately.
"But why not go to St. Ambrose's?"
"Oh! you do not know, Mr. Robinson," protested May with fresh energy.
"In the first place you are a man and cannot understand. In the second,
I suppose it is because I am so silly and childish and cowardly," she
went on incoherently. "Annie always said it was cowardly; she and Rose
went away quite bravely and cheerfully, keeping up their own and
everybody's spirits to the last. But Dora and I could not do it, yet I
do not know that anybody ever thought of calling our Dora cowardly
exactly, or silly, and childish. She was not a bit cowardly with the
horrid big dog and dear little Tray, you remember?--she would not let me
interfere, but she would have stoned the dog herself."
"Which would have been very foolish of her," said Tom Robinson with
decision. "I should say she was timid, not cowardly--there is a broad
distinction between the two conditions."
"It is just that we cannot leave home for any length of time, Dora and
I," said May piteously.
"So you and your sister Dora cannot leave home--that is the objection,
is it?" he repeated, slowly pulling his red moustache. "What do you call
home? The Old Doctor's House or Redcross?"
"Both," cried May quickly; "where father and mother and the rest of us
are, of course."
"But the rest of you are gone, and what if your father and mother were
to go too?"
"They won't, they never will," insisted May--"not until they come to
die. You were not meaning that? Oh! you could not be so cruel, so
barbarous," cried May, passionately, "when death is such a long way off,
I trust. I know that God is good whether we live or die, and that we
shall meet again in a better world. But we are not parted yet, and it is
not wrong to pray that we may be a long time together here on this very
earth, which we know so well, where we have been so happy. Why, father
and mother are not more than middle-aged--mother is not, and if father
is older, he is as strong and hale as anybody. Think how he was able to
give up his carriage and attend his patients on foot last autumn without
feeling it," urged the girl defiantly, in her passion of love and roused
dread, which she would not admit.
"Certainly," he strove to reassure her, feeling himself a savage for
frightening her by his inadvertence, "I never saw anybody wear so well
as Dr. Millar. He might be sixty or fifty--he may live to be a
hundred--I hope with all my heart he will; and I shall not be astonished
if I live to see it. As for Mrs. Millar, it is an insult to call her
middle-aged. It is something quite out of keeping to come across her
with such a tall daughter as you are."
"Yes, I am the tallest of the four," exclaimed May complacently,
diverted from the main topic, as he had intended her to be. "And I have
not done growing yet; my last summer's frock had to be let down half an
inch."
"Is it possible? What are we all coming to? You will soon have to stoop
to take my arm--if you ever condescend to take my arm."
"No," she denied encouragingly, "I am not so far above your shoulder
now," measuring the distance with a critical eye. "I shall not grow so
much as that comes to. You are bigger than father, and you would not
call him a little man; you are hardly even short."
"Thanks, you are too kind," said Tom Robinson, with the utmost gravity.
"But I say, Miss May, if I were you, I don't think I should do anything
to vex and thwart Dr. Millar, though he is so strong and active--long
may he continue so. You know how disappointed he would be if you were to
close your books."
"I am afraid he would," said May reluctantly. "I had almost forgotten
all about it for the last minute or two. But don't you think if you
spoke to him as I came to ask if you would," she continued unblushingly
and coaxingly, "if you were to try and show him--it would be so kind of
you--how comfortable and happy I should be with Phyllis Carey in your
shop--doing my best--indeed, I should try hard to please you and Miss
Franklin, all day--and getting home every evening--he might change his
mind?"
"No, he would not," said Tom with conviction; "and what is more, he
ought not. He would never cease to regret his shattered hopes for
you--which, remember, you would have shattered--and your spoilt life."
"But your life is not spoilt?" she said wistfully, unable to resign her
last hope.
"How can you tell?" he said, with a slight sharpness in his accent. Then
he added quickly, "No, for I am a born shopkeeper in another sense than
because I am one of a nation of shopkeepers."
He gave himself a reassuring shake, and resumed briskly--"I crave leave
to say, Miss May, that I actually enjoy making up accounts, turning over
samples, and giving orders. Sometimes I hit on a good idea which the
commercial world acknowledges, and then I am as proud as if I had
unearthed an ancient manuscript, or found the philosopher's stone. I
pulled a fellow through a difficulty the other day, and it felt like
taking part in an exciting fight. I have speculated occasionally when I
was fishing--paying myself a huge compliment, no doubt--whether old
Izaak Walton felt like me about trade."
"Was he in trade?" inquired May, with some surprise. "I know he wrote
_The Complete Angler_, and was a friend of Dr. Donne's and George
Herbert's, and is very much thought of to this day."
"Deservedly," said Tom Robinson emphatically. "Yes, I am proud to say,
he was a hosier to begin with, and a linen-draper to end
with--well-to-do in both lines. They say his first wife, whom he married
while he was still in business, was a niece of the Archbishop of
Canterbury of the day, and his second wife, whom he married after he had
retired to live on his earnings, was a half-sister of good Bishop Ken's;
but I do not pretend to vouch for the truth of these statements. Now,
about your father. I cannot do what you ask--I cannot in conscience.
Will you ever forgive me, 'little May'--that is what your father and
mother and your sisters call you sometimes to this day, ain't it? and it
is what I should have called you if I had been--your uncle say? Shall we
be no longer friends?" he demanded ruefully.
"Of course we shall," said May, with a suspicion of petulance. "You are
not bound to do what I bid you--I never thought that; and you are father
and mother's friend--how could I help being your friend?"
"Don't try to help it," he charged her.
Tom Robinson went farther than not feeling bound to do what May begged
of him, he was constrained to remonstrate in another quarter to prevent
trouble and disappointment to all concerned. He screwed up his courage,
and everybody knows he was a modest man, and called at the Old Doctor's
House for the express purpose. He had called seldom during the past
year--just often enough to keep up the form of visiting--to show that he
was not the surly boor, without self-respect or consideration for the
Millars, which he would have been if he had dropped all intercourse with
the family because one of them had refused to marry him. But though he
had begged for Dora's friendship when he could not have her love, and
had meant what he said, the wound was too recent for him to act as if
nothing had happened. In addition to the pain and self-consciousness,
there was a traditional atmosphere of agitation and alarm, a kind of
conventional awkwardness, together with an anxious countenance, and
protection sedulously afforded by the initiated and interested
spectators to Tom and Dora, which, like many other instances of
countenance and protection, went far towards doing the mischief they
were intended to prevent.
Tom saw through the punctilious feints and solemn stratagems clearly;
Dora did the same as plainly. Indeed the two would have been idiots if
they could have escaped from the discomfiting perception of the care
which was taken of them and their feelings, and the fact that every eye
was upon them.
The sole result was to render the couple more wretchedly uncomfortable
than if they had been set aside and sentenced to the company of each
other and of no one else for a bad five minutes every day of their
lives.
Another unhappy consequence of their being thus elaborately spared and
shielded was, that when by some unfortunate chance the tactics failed,
the couple felt as flurried and guilty as if they had contrived the
fruitless accident to serve their own nefarious ends.
Tom Robinson called on the Millars between four and five the day after
May had made her raid upon him, expecting to find what was left of the
family gathering together for afternoon tea. He had the ulterior design
of drawing May's father and mother apart, and letting them judge for
themselves the advisability of her going up at once to St. Ambrose's,
before her whole heart and mind were disastrously set against her
natural and honourable destiny. He was distinctly put out by finding
Dora alone. As for Dora, she told a faltering tale of her father's
having been called away to a poor patient who was a pensioner of her
mother's, and of Mrs. Millar's having walked over to Stokeleigh with
him to see what she could do for old Hannah Lightfoot; while May was
spending the afternoon with the Hewetts at the Rectory.
He hesitated whether to go or stay under the circumstances, but he hated
to beat an ignominious retreat, as if _he_ thought that _she_ thought he
could not be beside her for a quarter of an hour without making an ass
of himself again and pestering her. Why should he not accept the cup of
tea which she faintly offered from the hands that visibly trembled with
nervousness? When he came to consider it, why should he not transact his
business with Dora? She was as deeply interested as anybody, unless the
culprit herself; she probably knew better what May was foolishly
planning than either their father or mother did, and would convey to
them the necessary information.
As for Dora, she was thinking in a restless fever, "I hope--I hope he
does not see how much I mind being alone with him. It is just because I
am not used to it. How I wish somebody would come in,--not mother,
perhaps, for she would start and look put out herself, and sit down
without so much as getting rid of her sunshade; and, oh dear, not May,
for she would stare, and I do not know what on earth she would
think--some wild absurdity, I dare say; anyhow, she would look exactly
what she thought."
"Look here, Miss Dora," he said abruptly; "you don't think your sister
May ought to renounce the object of her education hitherto, and your
father's views for her, in order to do like Miss Phyllis Carey? You are
aware that May has become enamoured of Phyllis Carey's example, and is
bent on following in her footsteps; but it won't do, and I have told her
so. I trust nobody suspects me of encouraging young ladies to become
shop-women," he added, with a slightly foolish laugh, "as old actors
used to be accused of decoying young men of rank and fashion into going
on the stage, and recruiting sergeants of beguiling country bumpkins
into taking the king's shilling."
"Has May spoken to you about it?" cried Dora, startled out of her
engrossing private reflections. "What a child she is! I am sorry she has
troubled you; she ought not to have done that. I hope you will excuse
her."
"Don't speak of it," he said a little stiffly, as he put down his cup
and signified he would have no more tea.
"And you said no," remarked Dora, with an involuntary fall of her voice
reflecting the sinking of her heart. "Of course you could not do
otherwise. It was a foolish notion. I am afraid Phyllis Carey is enough
of a nuisance to Miss Franklin--and other people. It is hard that you
should be bothered by these girls. Only I suspect poor 'little May' will
be most dreadfully, unreasonably disappointed;" and there was an attempt
to smile and a quiver of the soft lips which she could not hide.
"I am not bothered, and I hate to disappoint your sister,--I trust you
understand that," he said quickly and earnestly. "But it would be
sacrificing her and overturning your father's arrangements for
her--disappointing what I am sure are among his dearest wishes."
She did not ask, like May, why he did not count himself sacrificed. She
only said shyly and wistfully, "I knew it was out of the question, but
if it had not been so, or if there had been any other way, it would have
been such a boon to poor May not to be torn from home." At the harrowing
picture thus conjured up her voice fairly shook, and the tears started
into her dovelike eyes.
"Home," he said impatiently, "is not everything; at least, not the home
from which every boy must go, as a matter of course. 'Torn from home' in
order to go to school! Surely the first part of the sentence is tall
language."
"It is neither too tall nor too strong where May is concerned," said
Dora, rousing herself to plead May's cause. "She has not been away from
home and from father--especially from mother, and one or other of the
rest of us, for longer than a week since she was born."
"Then the sooner she begins the better for her," he said brutally, as it
sounded to himself, to the loving, shrinking girl he was addressing.
"She has always been the little one, the pet," urged Dora; "she will not
know what to do without some of us to take care of her and be good to
her."
"But she must go away some day," he continued his remonstrance. "How old
is your sister?"
"She was seventeen last Christmas," Dora answered shamefacedly.
"Why, many a woman is married before she is May's age," he protested.
"Many a woman has left her native country, gone among strangers, and had
to maintain her independence and dignity unaided, by the time she was
seventeen. Queen Charlotte was not more than sixteen when she landed in
England and married George the Third."
Dora could not help laughing, as he meant her to do. "May and Queen
Charlotte! they are as far removed as fire and water. But," she answered
meekly, "I know the Princess Royal was no older when she went to Berlin;
and poor Marie Antoinette was a great deal younger, as May would have
reminded me if she had been here, in the old days when she travelled
from Vienna to Paris. But there--it is all so different. They were
princesses from whom a great deal is expected, and the Princess Royal
was the eldest instead of the youngest of the Queen's children."
"Does seniority make so great a difference?" he said, with an inflection
of his voice which she noticed, though he hastened to make her forget it
by speaking again gravely the next minute. "Should May not learn to
stand alone? Would it not be dwarfing and cramping her, all her life
probably, to give way to her now. Can it ever be too early to acquire
self-reliance, and is it not one of the most necessary lessons for a
responsible human being to learn? Besides, '_ce n'est que le premier pas
qui coute_.' It is only the first wrench which will hurt her. She will
find plenty of fresh interests and congenial occupations at St.
Ambrose's. In a week, a fortnight, she will not miss you too much."
Dora shook her head incredulously. It was little he knew of May, with
her fond family attachments, and her helplessness when left to herself
in common things.
"Follow my advice, Miss Dora," he said, rising to take his leave, "don't
aid and abet Miss May in seeking to shirk her obligations.
Unquestionably the one nearest to her at present is that she should go
to St. Ambrose's. Don't prevent her from beginning to think and act for
herself--not like a charming child, but in the light of her dawning
womanhood."
He gave a swift glance round him as he spoke, and a recollection which
had been in the background of both their thoughts during the whole of
the interview, flashed into the foreground. It was of that day a year
ago, a breezy spring day like this, when, as it seemed, there were the
same jonquils in the jar on the chimney-piece, and the same
cherry-blossom seen through the window against the blue sky, and he had
asked her with his heart on his lips, and the happiness of his life at
stake, to be his wife, and she had told him, with agitation and distress
almost equal to his, that he could never be anything to her. He caught
her half-averted eyes, and felt the whole scene was present with her as
with him once more, and the consciousness brought back all his old
shyness and reserve, and hurried his leave-taking. The slightest touch
to her hand, and he had bowed himself out and was gone.
"How silly he must think me," Dora reflected, walking up and down the
empty room in perturbation, "both about poor 'little May,' and about
remembering the last time we were alone together. I dare say he is
right about May, though men never do understand what girls feel. If she
should fall ill, and break her heart, and die of home-sickness--such
things have happened before now--I wonder what he would say then about
her learning to stand alone? Very likely he would assert that St.
Ambrose's is not St. Petersburg, or even Shetland or the Scilly Isles.
It is not far away, and if she were not well or happy, she could come
back in half a day, as the other girls could come down from London. But
then he would despise her, for as quiet and good-natured as he is, and
though people have said that he himself had no proper pride in
consenting to have a shop. And I don't think May could bear contempt
from anybody whom she had ever looked on as a friend. Men are hard--the
best of them are, and they don't understand. He is kind--I am sure he
means it all in kindness; but he is not yielding; he is as masterful as
when he dragged the dogs to the edge of the bank and let them drop into
the Dewes for their good. He will never be turned from what he thinks
right. I wish he had not guessed what I could not help remembering--he
was quick enough in doing that; and I could not tell him that I did not
imagine for a moment--I was not so foolish--that he was under the same
delusion he suffered from twelve months ago. If he had been oftener
here in the interval, and we had met and been together naturally as we
used to be, sometimes, I should have forgotten all about it, and so
would he, no doubt. But how could I help thinking of it when there has
always been such a point made of mother or some one else being present
when he called? I am certain it is quite unnecessary and a great
mistake. He will not speak to me again as he spoke that day. There is no
danger of his running away with me," Dora told herself with an unsteady
laugh. "I hope he is not under the impression that I did not think and
act for myself when I was forced to do it. Because, although they all
knew about it, and of course Annie and the others teased me about
'Robinson's,' and the colour of his hair, and his size, father and
mother told me to decide for myself, and I did not hesitate for a
moment. I could no more have borne to leave them all of my own free will
than May could. Surely it was proof positive I did not like him in that
way," Dora represented to herself with the greatest emphasis.
Tom Robinson was marching home with his hands in his pockets and his hat
drawn over his eyes. "How hard she must think me--little short of a
pragmatical, supercilious brute--not to do my best to keep 'little May'
at home, where the child wants to be. I asked her to let me call myself
her friend, and this is the first specimen of my friendship! she will
take precious good care not to ask for another. She will be horribly
dull left by herself without one girl companion, only the old people.
These sisters were so happy together--I liked to see them, perhaps all
the more because I had neither brothers nor sisters of my own--I thought
it was an assurance of what they might be in other relations of life. I
suppose she will tackle that little spitfire of a dog which I inflicted
on them. May will lay her parting injunctions on Dora to plague herself
perpetually with the monster, and these will be like dying words to
Dora, she will sooner die herself than intermit a single harassing
attention. And it will be impossible for her to avoid many deprivations.
There are more partings to be faced in the future. Millar is an old man,
even if he could hope to pay up the bank's calls and make some provision
for his widow and daughters. It was a pity poor Dora could not care for
me, when there need have been no partings where we two were concerned,
save that material separation of death which is quoted in the marriage
service. She would not have believed, nor I either, that it could touch
the spiritual side of the question and the love which is worth having,
that is God-like and belongs to immortality. I might have done what I
could if Dora had married me, so far as the other girls would have let
me, to serve as a buffer between the family and the adversity which I am
afraid not all their high spirit and gallant fight will hold entirely at
bay. It was not to be, and there is an end on't. I wonder where I found
the heart, and the cheek too for that matter, to bully Dora about May,
though, Heaven knows, I spoke no more than the truth. Well, she has her
revenge, and I am punished for it. It cut me up at the time to hurt her,
and the recollection of having contradicted and pained so sweet and
gentle a creature is very much as if I had dealt a lamb a blow or wrung
a pigeon's neck--on principle."
Half an hour afterwards Mrs. Millar bustled into her drawing-room with
an expression of mingled annoyance and excited expectation on her still
comely face.
"My dear Dora, I am so sorry; he gave his name to Jane, and she has told
me who has been calling in my absence. I wish I had not left you by
yourself. But who was to guess that Tom Robinson would call this
afternoon? It must have been exceedingly disagreeable for you."
"I don't know," said Dora, vaguely and desperately; "we must meet
sometimes when there is nobody by, if we continue to live in the same
town. I wish you would not mind it for me, mother, and keep on trying to
avoid such accidents, for I really think it makes them worse when they
do happen."
"Very well, my dear, you know your own feelings best," said Mrs. Millar,
a little puzzled. In her day it was reckoned no more than what was due
to maidenly delicacy and social propriety to preserve a respectful
distance between a rejected man and his rejector. As if the gentleman
might, as Dora had said, carry off the lady by force, or shoot her or
himself with the pistol hidden in his breast!